Magic/Photograph

"When I look back on my ordinary, ordinary life / I see so much magic though I missed it at the time."

"It's just another story caught up in another photograph I found."

-Jamie Cullum, Photograph

Listening to this one song the other day sparked two sets of varying thoughts...

The first was just another simple reminder, one of many that I'm finding pop up everywhere, that we must live in the moment and appreciate what we have, what we're doing and who we're with. Looking back and seeing the magic of all of that could be great, but surely experiencing it now would be better?

The second was about photographs as objects themselves, and how they really can say a thousand words or more. They capture only a fraction of time but can be an expression of thousands of thoughts. I like how we might have no physical connection to a photograph, but we can feel drawn to it and like we understand it all the same, as if it was taken for us. How can a 'closed' representation of one moment in time of a place we've never been, people we've never met, things we've never seen with our own eyes be so 'open' and ready to be interpreted by anyone who sees it? Connotations are of course what often forms most of our impression of a photograph, the majority of which are human nature/instinct or are learned through our upbringing and society. But then we all have our own connotations relating to our personal experience. I love the million ways a simple photo can be interpreted or imagined, and the simultaneity of this and the fact that it's 'done', 'finished'. The point at which these two opposites collide is that moment when we understand the picture, and the story caught up in it.

photo here